Chief Executive's update - 5 June 2012

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Release Date: 05 June 2012

The first really wintry blast is upon us now and that’s a timely reminder that we need to look after each other. The next CERA supplement that will arrive in your letterbox from next week has a lot of information about the services and support available to everyone over the winter months.

As always, it is important to keep warm, dry and healthy, and to ensure your friends, family and neighbours are also safe. And if there is someone you know that needs help, please don’t hesitate to call the appropriate service.

Having been through so much in the past 20 months here in Canterbury, it really shouldn’t be a shock when a biggish aftershock comes along.

But I still hate that realisation that the wobbling is a little bit bigger than usual, and 10 days ago on that lovely Friday afternoon, we had one of those days.

As we know from the past, a sizeable aftershock can play havoc with the repair schedule of buildings and gives the insurance sector butterflies.

So I was extremely pleased to hear that some insurers will not alter their underwriting stance despite the 5.2 quake.

And I was equally pleased to get the message from CERA’s in-house engineers that there was no actual destruction reported, although it clearly exacerbated the damage in buildings like the Cathedral.

So while we shut down the CBD Red Zone for a couple of hours on Friday, it was merely precautionary. Within a very short time we knew there were no serious casualties – and that’s buildings and, more, importantly people.

The Red Zone reopened as normal at 7am the next day and the work continued as normal.

That’s an important message we are all, as Canterbury citizens, duty bound to pass on to our friends and family in other parts of the country – the rebuild work continues and our recovery continues.

The work that the Christchurch Central Development Unit is doing is a huge part of that process they are on target to develop the Blueprint of our new central city on 27 July 2012.

Along with last Thursday’s launch of the Recovery Strategy, this all adds up to the progress that is being made right across our region.

In the past three weeks I’ve been to community meetings where the people of Southshore and Parklands learned more about their options. Not everyone is happy, although many people are extremely relieved.

But what I’ve learned from talking to these people is that no matter if they are pleased or not with the zoning outcome, they are all resilient.

And that’s another message we need to be sharing with the rest of the country. Our city’s rebuild is on, like us it is resilient, so it’s not stopping for a blast of wintery weather or a measly little 5.2 shake.